


don't you ever tame your demons (but always keep them on a leash)

by paintedviolet



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Accidentally Attracted Yasmin Khan, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Dark, Dark!Thirteen, F/F, UST, Vampire!Thirteen, dramatic ways to befriend a lonely young woman, more characters and tags to be added as i figure this out, talk of sin
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-10-17
Packaged: 2020-10-19 13:07:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20657738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paintedviolet/pseuds/paintedviolet
Summary: ‘What’s your regret tonight, miss?’ the woman whispers. Her mouth stays open, just a little, like she is about to inhale, but there is no release in her chest, no breath spiralling out ghostly in the heathen night. ‘How far have you fallen?’Flirting with the fallen will never end well.Vampire!Thirteen AU.(Work title taken from 'Arsonist's Lullabye' by Hozier.)





	1. could barely tear my eyes away

**Author's Note:**

> do i know where this is going? no. am i excited for the journey? hell yeah
> 
> basically i saw this _amazing_ [gifset](https://sapphichymns.tumblr.com/post/187599272557) by sapphichymns on tumblr and it immediately made me think of a vampire thirteen so now, here i am, writing this, instead of going to bed like a normal person. help me

She comes at night, the ghost of a bad choice.

She lingers in doorways and side streets, drawn by unnatural nature to the hubbub of life. All of Sheffield’s debauchery: the drinking, the shouting, the fighting. Humanity hides its Hydes in the daylight, but when the moon appears, Hell itself will ring the bell and its citizens will come running. In a sick sort of way, it is fascinating; it is impossible not be tempted by it. And, she, too, the temptress, is tempted.

She emerges. Delicate hands darting out around the rusty red of bricks covered by night and fingers wrapping themselves round the corners. The strike of her heel like knives on the pavements, Louboutin’s black and gorgeous. Slender legs, long for her height, sheathed in black trousers and placed precisely as she follows. Fingertips of her left hand, miming by habit an aspersion against the autumn chill, trailing slowly up to lay kisses on exposed skin: a sheer drop in her midnight blouse, the sharpest V flirting with her ribcage. Each finger laden with rings, ruby red in the orange streetlight and dripping with decadence.

She follows at night, and Yaz knows the dark purpose of her stalker’s heels will ring in her ears for hours after.

She shivers. They always do.

A night out after a school reunion. Surrounded by bodies pulsating with the pulsing music, most of them half out of their minds with alcohol and drugs. Sweaty, sidelined and sober, Yaz has spent most of the night drowning her misery in overpriced glasses of Diet Coke and trying to smile at drunk primary school acquaintances she was meant to mingle with. Life is like that, though; it’ll dissipate whatever fuzzy nostalgia you may have had for a time in your childhood, dissipate it with the stench of drink-soaked bars and the noise of awkward mis-conversation played in your head on repeat.

In retrospect, a terrible idea.

Even more terrible now she’s lost the group she’s meant to be going back with. With her damn phone on 1%, she knows it won’t manage to book an Uber trip. Her _damn _phone; she’s been meaning to fix it for a week now, and she’s feeling the consequences.

Walking back alone on Sheffield’s streets. Her small heels are prone to making a satisfying _clop _on Sheffield’s streets, but on sodden fallen leaves they are quietened. She will not be heard. Quietness and condemnation – any street is bad news for a single woman. Any street at night, a possible death sentence. Yaz keeps her wits about her, and prays to no end that she will not meet the suited, Louboutin’d stalker.

No such luck.

The wind rushes through these buildings like a tourist; with time to do nothing but grab everything it can in its grip. Chilly and uncompromising. She turns the collar of her coat up, but it stills blows down her neck, puts her hairs on end. It whispers to her: _terrible idea, terrible idea, young lady. You think you could escape?_

She knows these streets, knows them better than most living here. God knows she’s been patrolling them for long enough. She knows the ins and outs and where the people go to gather, to ruminate on their run-down dreams or concoct new ones, seediness bursting at their seams. The people gather in the loneliest places to assuage their loneliness, Yaz has found, and so will the stalker. So will she.

No such luck, she thinks again, as the sound of footsteps doubles in her eardrums. A thinner sound, a higher pitch, and her heart drops.

She ducks her head and walks faster – she repeats to herself: _the police station is not too far from here_. And there, a charger, the warm light and the cool feel of authority. No night-time stalker would think to follow her in there. No stalker would ever dare.

‘Are you running from me?’

Yaz closes her eyes, but she can see the face clear as the night sky. A little short, a little square, angular and a button nose. Round, searching eyes, outlined by thick, black eyeliner. It doesn’t seem right, not the sort of face she would associate with a night-time wanderer. But the brunette hair, black in the night, curls round the jaw like a snake, and her eyebrows are too perfect, too easy to curve into enticement. Worst of all, the lips that should have held a softness are edged with a darkness. When her eyes narrow, her smile becomes a smirk, an expression that bites and lies.

Yaz can’t stop thinking about it.

‘I’m – I’m getting to safety,’ she responds, a little shakily. All she knows about stalkers – ignore them, don’t engage, get to safety, get to protection. And, what does she do?

Yaz can’t stop cursing herself.

‘You’ll be hard-pressed to find it here,’ the woman continues, her pace quickening at first imperceptibly to match Yaz’s, ‘not down these streets. Such a strange thing, you are. Such a shame for a pretty woman like you to be here at this time.’

In her thick Yorkshire dialect, the tone becomes even more playful. What does it mean to hear you’re being played with? Yaz feels a mouse. Soon the cat will entrap her in her claws, and she will hang by her tail, squeaks falling on deaf ears. She fears for her life, fears for the trap. She fears the lure; fears she already knows it.

‘Then why are you here?’ she asks. Just a few more turns, and then a main road. Brighter lights and more people. She will not follow Yaz there, she asks for no witnesses; and Yaz strains to break that deal.

The woman is catching up now, long strides hinting towards a hidden power built into that lithe body of hers.

‘It’d be such a shame if the night didn’t have a pretty woman like me here,’ the follower answers. ‘It’s my time, after all. The worst of the world come out at night. We parade our sins on these streets.’

Yaz will not look. Yaz will not look.

‘Mine are many, and yours are few. You feel too...good.’ The woman’s smile evident in her voice. It’s so close – right behind her, and Yaz shivers. She has to escape. ‘But still, you’re here. There must be something wrong with you.’

Yaz feels a grip on her coat and she is spun forcefully out of her own control. Her shriek is shushed, and she is forced to slam her back against the building. The brick is hard and cool against the thin layers Yaz has on, but underneath her body is burning hot.

Dark eyes, something close to hazel perhaps, narrow at her in the streetlight; not with suspicion but with a curious regard. When Yaz holds the gaze, she feels her irises stinging, like something unholy is taking hold. She can barely look in her eyes, but the woman gives her no choice.

The smell of perfume drifts into Yaz’s nose, rosewater and juniper, a hint of spice. Her head fills with it, and she almost lets it fall back in the contentment. But she can’t, she doesn’t, her breathing too erratic, too panicked, to fall in fully.

‘What’s your regret tonight, miss?’ the woman whispers. Her mouth stays open, just a little, like she is about to inhale, but there is no release in her chest, no breath spiralling out ghostly in the heathen night. ‘How far have you fallen?’

Yaz is burning up, feverish. Her knees almost buckle. But she is no fallen; she will answer to her God or be damned. Jahannam is where this woman may be headed, but not her, not her.

She regains a sense of herself; a part of her training kicking in. In a frenzy of fear and strength, she pushes the woman off and apprehends her in a lock. Her perfume again, that heady concoction. It is infuriating.

‘I could get you arrested,’ Yaz hisses. ‘Slap a restraining order on you.’

The woman laughs. ‘Would you?’ She twists her head as much as she can. ‘Why haven’t you done it before?’

Yaz scoffs, too loudly. ‘I thought it’d be a one—’

‘—Three-time thing,’ the woman corrects. ‘Don’t tell me you forget them.’

A pause. Not quite shame, close enough to embarrassment. ‘No.’

The woman nods, near impossible in the lock. ‘I’m not here to take your innocence. There are plenty creeps out here, sweetheart. Dealt with a few of them; they’re cocky enough to try their luck. But no such luck.

‘Let me go and we’ll meet again, but I won’t follow.’

‘I don’t trust you,’ Yaz says, after much consideration, and a tightening of her grip, but she lets the woman go regardless. It’s true – she doesn’t trust her, though she’d like to. Giving her word, though, keeps her in good stead, and she’s not far from the main road, not far at all. There are only so many steps a stalker can run before they reach the hubbub of witnesses. Together or not; she’d rather take her chance than not at all.

And who, of the two of them, is wearing Louboutin’s?

The release of Yaz’s lock gives the woman free rein, but she too keeps to her word. Roughly shoved as she was, she lets a snarl carve her lips, and it stays as she steps back. The distance between their bodies remains small, but enough. Those eyes, though; they keep Yaz locked tight.

‘I know what your sin is,’ the woman says finally, her hair a little unkempt. Strands stuck to her jaw. She swallows, without breath. ‘I can see it in your eyes.’

Yaz is burning again. ‘Get lost,’ she growls.

The woman acquiesces, narrow eyes and half a smile. She gives a little bow, the sharp V of her blouse bending downwards and slicing into Yaz’s common sense; and her eyes on Yaz through all of it. Then as quick as she came, she disappears again, the ghost of a bad decision remembered only in Yaz’s visible exhalations.


	2. you know better, babe (than to smile at me just like that)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whaddup so i actually have an outline for this multi-chap now
> 
> enjoy
> 
> as per the wonderful recommendation by [sapphichymns](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphichymns), the best song to go with this chapter is ['it will come back'](https://youtu.be/PKp121E9E2A) by the venerated "tall tree man", hozier

'I'm going out,' she calls.

They know, already, that she will be out scouting. Still engrossed by the information trickling in on his laptop, the glow of the Stenza stone locked onto the lid, Ryan throws a muffled, 'Bye,' through a mouthful of tonight's dinner. Graham is nowhere to be seen, but they hear the kettle brewing.

Yaz half-wishes they would stop her.

Night descended hours ago. Autumn falls with no mercy, the cold and dark enveloping after three months of hesitant respite. Her journey is cloaked by moulting trees, their leaves showing the signs of their burnishing by the summer sun. Soon they will cower, exposed skeletons, as the absence of life condemns those they cannot shade. She walks under them, and shivers for them.

A bus journey later, she is a citizen of the city centre, lost to the world amongst all of its uncompromising buildings. Rows and rows of them, hidden lives with windows shut against the autumn chill. Though their lights are bright, and the crowds keep the heat in their bustle, that doesn't mean Sheffield is safe. Sheffield is never safe.

Her vigilance is what keeps her alive; has done for years now. Her secondary role drives her further into the heart of danger than her day job. The deeper they get, the three of them, the further away the Sheffield of her childhood feels. Dark forces gather from distances unfathomable. It is their vigilance that protects them, for if they are not vigilant, then more will die.

They were caught out that first time. But never again.

Side streets curl around her inner map, hissing their enticement. Even the main streets are complicit in this. Sweet temptations stays here, begging her to explore the depths, to find something new. Shadows look different in every alleyway, it implores; and every wanderer has a story to tell. Why won't you tell yours?

Down each road, she keeps herself quiet. She's opted for trainers over heels, and dark clothes: a dark, silvery strap top and black jeans rolled up twice at the ankles. Her black coat, with the collar up, and a thick blanket scarf, tartan red shrouded in all but light. Her hair is braided: no signature space buns. She's done her makeup. She hates that she's done her makeup.

She has no idea how this will even work. She doesn't even know what she wants out of tonight. A certainty, perhaps? Of what? But the curiosity and the silence are eating her alive, taking turns to gnaw at her insides, sore gums dragged over pliable flesh. And she can't live like that.

Those words the woman said. It wasn't just a statement. It was a promise.

So here Yaz is, fulfilling it.

She condemns herself down the side streets. Those who prowl here turn to face her, each one, carefully taking in her features: the plunge of her neck hidden by a coat collar; the tight fist wrapped around a key, the other hand bunched in her pocket.

She walks, and she looks back. These streets know she has gone scouting down here before. They must know, then, that she has been tempted. She will be known.

The indication of success comes first as a feeling, the familiar presence enough to frighten the hairs on the back of her neck. Looking around makes her seem suspicious – as if she, an outsider, were not already suspicious – but she can't stop herself: she needs to find her. Scanning the faces peering back at her: broken noses and pock-marked scowls; clean-shaven, tattooed, immaculately suspect individuals: searching, frowning, searching, until she recognises the severity of a suit. The cut of her bob.

Heels sharp on a pavement. Looking ahead, looking at Yaz – not once at the dwellers, not ever at the street prowlers, who cower as she passes, who duck their head away to resume their spectating at a safer distance. This woman, so known that others turn away in fear.

The chills down Yaz's spine are so virulent, they heat her body up. What is she doing, flirting with death? She should go back. She should leave, retreat to safety and a shining future. She has seen some monstrosities, undaunted, but it is this woman who sends sharp fear to prick at her skin.

She has almost lost her nerve by the time the woman reaches her. There are no goosebumps on her skin against the cold, despite wearing the same outfit: the same black blouse, the same trousers, the same seeming ill-preparedness against the cold weather. Hazel-green eyes take in Yaz's stance: the always-closed coat, the trainers. When her eyes reach those staring back at her, her smile is all dark pleasure.

'You kept your promise,' she says, a note of surprise fluttering across her intonation. She brings a hand up towards her chest to adjust the position of a single ring. The blood red sapphire catches the reflection of the streetlights, and light sparks in Yaz's eyes. 

She blinks. 'So did you.'

'You're looking for trouble.'

Yaz knows. She shifts uneasily on her foot, and counters, 'You asked for me.'

The woman's laugh is short. 'It's your grave.' The hand that fiddled with the ring is extended towards the outsider. 'Care for a drink?'

This part of Sheffield prefers pubs over pop-up cafés; the keep-quiet establishments over the sophisticated shopping centres. The modern world of minimalism and chain restaurants has been rejected here, and instead the gaudy debauchery is almost entirely operated by those who dare to journey down here. And only those. For however many times she has had to tread down here, she's never once felt welcome. Never like a local. Not an entirely alien concept, not in modern-day Britain, but to feel it so differently here, so distinctly, exacerbates her discomfort. 

'So few sins,' the woman leading to her to one of these establishments had said. She feels their absence as if a presence; branded by it. The dwellers of these shaded street corners do not stare at her, but at her branding. She, a woman of the light, the good. Following this djinn down dark alleys.

She can't exactly blame them for staring. Victim or fool? Either, or both. They watch the procession – not to pity but merely to acknowledge.

She's led to a drinking establishment, a creaky pub with sticky mahogany floors and fusty red curtains smelling like centuries of cigarettes. So, too, do they smoke here, brazenly despite the clear illegality. On instinct, her hackles raise. But then again, they are locals. If an outsider like Yaz lit up, that simply would not be tolerated. Her mere presence sets off an atmosphere of unease – as soon as the smokers spot her, they do their best to crush their cigarettes on their beer coasters. Their glare follows Yaz as she walks, all the way to the table the woman guides her to. At the table, she takes off her coat, draping it over the back of her chair. She feels exposed, her top too shimmery in this old-fashioned place. She can hear the jeers of a group of middle-aged men around the corner, laughing about something unknown, but it makes her self-conscious.

Drinks. The woman decides on a Bloody Mary, an easy decision if Yaz ever saw one. Citing her religion, Yaz chooses a Diet Coke.

It makes the woman pause, and cock her head ever so slightly, freezing Yaz to the motion. Honey-sweet and broad, she posits, 'Do you believe in angels?'

Yaz shakes her head. Nothing of the Christian faith, unless paralleled in her own faith, ever really concerns her. 'You?'

'I believe in hypocrites,' the woman answers coolly. Then she strides to the bar to order, her fingertips stroking the length of the table until the last possible moment, leaving Yaz to watch the invisible gouges it makes on the wood, on her head; blinking at the implications of her answer.

One Bloody Mary, and one Diet Coke. Yaz uses the refreshment of her fizzy drink to anchor her to the last sense of normality she can salvage. With the woman watching her over the large cocktail glass, it is not easy.

She swallows. Clears her throat. Prays to God – for a multitude. 'You've never told me your name,' she notes, and it's a good start. She hopes.

'I've never told you a lot of things,' the woman shrugs. A sip of her cocktail leaves behind the slightest hint of lipstick.

'We're not going to get anywhere if you insist on being cryptic like this,' Yaz huffs, barely managing to keep the scowl off her face. In reality, she is in two minds about her own words, pulled to the mystery woman as she is. But she's not here to be pulled under, she keeps telling herself.

Besides, the woman doesn't have to know.

'Why, is it not working?' She arches an eyebrow for good measure, and Yaz's frustration starts to burn, deep and low.

'What isn't?' But it is a demand the woman will not give.

Another mouthful of Bloody Mary. A drop of red has escaped the rim of the glass; a fingertip, the manicured nail painted black, sweeps up the bloody liquid. Lifted up to her mouth, her tongue darts out to claim the prize. For a moment, Yaz swears she sees the woman's canines end in a knife-like point. Though that can't be true.

Lips close around the droplet. Consumed. It is obscene, the way the woman watches Yaz. It is obscene that Yaz watches back.

'My name is the Doctor,' the woman confesses. 'That's what I go by, anyway.' She leans closer, over the table, and lowers her tone. 'Places like these, it's best to keep real names quiet.' She sits upright again, and smiles. 'Don't you think, Yaz?'

Fear takes Yaz by the throat. She almost gasps.

'How do you know that?' she hisses.

The Doctor waves away Yaz's frenzy, almost bored by it. 'The first time I saw you,' she explains, 'you were on duty with another officer. You passed by us, in conversation as I smoked with some friends outside the Black Hart. Some people I'd met that night got into a fight, and you stopped it.' She pauses. 'Your colleague used your first name. Yasmin. She was asking whether you were hurt, and told you not to play it down. You'd received a black eye but looked exhilarated. Police uniform, a jump in your gait, and one, single braid. Just like tonight.'

Yaz frowns. 'Why do you remember so much?'

'What's the point in forgetting?'

An easy enough explanation, at surface level. But although Yaz goes searching for a lie to catch her out, the response is irritatingly clean. She remembers that night: a drunken brawl outside of the pub the Doctor mentioned. Situated on a street corner between the safer and the darker sides of Sheffield, it is a pub police officers are called to often – and go to with comparatively little hesitation.

It clicks for her. Weeks past, before the woman followed her, they must have been in the same vicinity. Just because Yaz didn't notice her, it doesn't mean that the Doctor couldn't have noticed Yaz.

Her mouthful of Diet Coke is longer, slower. When it touches down on wood, Yaz demands, 'If they were your friends, then tell me the names of the two men who were arrested.'

The Doctor smiles, and it's almost polite. 'Only one of them got arrested. That was Andersen. Your colleague let Kamrin off with a warning,' she answers.

Damn it. After a moment, Yaz concedes.

'I never called them my friends, either,' the Doctor adds. Half of her cocktail has been consumed by now. Above them, a wall light, shaped like a clam, starts flickering. The Victorian pattern of the wall, hidden then thrown into sharp relief, starts to aggravate Yaz. 'I only saw Kamrin once afterwards.'

An alright man, all things considered; just hanging out with the wrong crowd. He was sweet enough to the police officers even when drunk. 'How's he now?' Yaz wonders.

'Dead,' the Doctor replies, with no remorse, no air of mourning, in the slightest.

Yaz can feel her hands tremble. She finished her Coke, and the slam of glass on wood is the only sound for half a minute.

'Why do you call yourself the Doctor?'

The tables immediately surrounding them have been vacated. They sit as if alone in the entire pub, gazes still intense. The ghost of the lock she'd apprehended the Doctor with comes to rest on the underside of her arms, her elbows. At the same time, she feels the cold, hard bricks on her back; remembers that curious lack of breath. So many calculations and consequences. It takes all of her to keep calm in the mire.

What gets to her the most, though, is the Doctor's willingness to be honest.

'I used to be a doctor, a long time ago,' and in all the time Yaz has known the woman, this is the first time the Doctor cannot look at her. 'A _ long _ time ago.' She scoffs. 'I don't appreciate the memory of it, but I appreciate the authority. My wish is my command; by this name, others are commanded to follow it.'

She understands that. But she frowns. 'You don't appreciate the memory of being a doctor? Of helping people?'

Outside, the wind picks up, a lament. Yaz can feel it in her bones. Windows rattle, but do not break. Drinkers dotted across the pub turn to the windows, stare them down, and the wind obliges.

'I don't appreciate being reminded of my previous goodness,' the Doctor scowls, 'compared to what I am now. Demons are guilty, too, just as angels are hypocrites.' The Doctor squints. 'It's why you puzzled me.'

'Me?' Yaz almost chokes on her indignation. 'I'm – I'm no demon.'

The Doctor nods, a luxurious movement.

'So why me?'

'Because there's so much life in you,' the Doctor whispers. 'Untapped, like it's never had the chance to escape. Not yet. Imagine, all of that virtue tucked safe inside. So proper. So righteous.' She purses her lips, the sour of lemon. 'By all accounts, I should hate you.'

Yaz's hackles rise again. The urge to message Ryan for backup crosses her mind. It flits off into oblivion, never realised.

'But?'

'But I don't.' The Doctor smiles again, and necks the last of her Bloody Mary. 'So what's your sin, Yasmin? What is it we have in common?'

Fury breaks, deep and slow in her belly but hot and harsh in her head. Her expression hardens, infuriated further at the sight of the Doctor's resultant smirk. 'We have nothing in common,' she snaps, and, gathering her coat from the back of her chair, she leaves the building.

The wildness of the night speaks to her turmoil. She keeps her collar up against it, but she cannot deny it. She is shouted at by a passerby, a local, to keep walking out of this district, but she doesn't acknowledge him. Her own thoughts are too much.

Disappointment, and a slight rage at being bested again. Endangering herself – and for what? Nothing new but a name. She marches on, flanked by the wall of the pub; the smell of alcohol and grease and cigarettes still trailing like a whisper. The wind howls at her, and she wishes to howl it all back.

She'll go back tonight, talk to Ryan and Graham and say she found nothing. Sheffield, safe another night. Though, secretly, it maybe isn't. Maybe the Doctor is its worst nightmare. Right now, she is Yaz's, and that is enough to keep her wits about her.

She shakes her head. Infuriating beyond belief.

She feels another presence on the street behind her. Another stalker? Another man telling her to get lost? She has no patience for it. She holds tight onto her coat, picks up her pace, but the follower walks faster. And faster, until they are level. Yaz looks around. And stops.

It's the woman. Of course it's the woman. Watching, her gaze sure, and lighter than Yaz expects. 

Something in her jolts, like the world jumping off its axis.

'What do you want?' she demands – but she barely has time to get her words out before the Doctor is in her space. Close again, too close to breathe, mouths open, the Doctor's arms anchored on Yaz's bicep, on Yaz's waist. She can barely breathe. The perfume is in her nose again. The Doctor's presence too powerful. Too commanding.

'It's this,' the Doctor murmurs, 'that is our sin.' Yaz can barely think. 'It's your choice. That's all it is. Fall into it, if you want. But it's your choice.'

She shouldn't be doing this. She shouldn't be tempted by this. But she can't think, can't breathe, can't deny this, can't accept anything except their closeness, her frustration maddening, spiralling deep down into her, into something else, something primal.

How far is she willing to fall? How much should she enjoy it?

Yaz is the one who pushes forward, and presses her lips to the damned. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i just. vampire!13 is such an _edgelord_


	3. you left me burning with the embers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes i love all my aspects of writing vamp!fic: dramatic prose, UST, introspection and [squints at smudged handwriting] _polt_
> 
> the title of this chapter is taken from ['come back for me'](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY8H-vztguQ) by jaymes young, a song i'd recommend listening to for this chapter. also i have a [playlist of spotify for this fic now](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1IzIyn37RpAJH3k192tknh?si=Bfdn1fZMQnaAQKO2vJy0WA) so enjoy the dark & sultry vibes

‘She don’t look a day past thirty, for all the time I’ve been here.’

‘And... is that a bad thing?’

‘I’ve been coming here for forty.’

They ring in her ears, the implications. She may be a fool for pursuing this, but she still has her wits about her. She still has half a brain even if the other half is relentlessly preoccupied.

The blackest heat that spreads through her, deep down and delicious. When hints of spice flutter by on city breezes, from foreign perfumes on passers-by, she will turn her head every time. The sound of heels on pavements, like flint striking stone, is on endless repeat to fill the dullest moments with something wonderfully wicked.

Heat simmering, hands coming up to her cheeks, black nails running down her autumn-chilled skin and following the slope of her shoulders, her waist, the very curves of her. Hungry, unbidden, her own fingers finding collarbones, reminiscent of knives glinting in the light; finding the slope of the Doctor’s shoulder. With her mouth, pushing forward again and again, aiming without success to rid herself of breath entirely – or, at least, give it all to the Doctor, all to her, in exchange for this delectable immolation to keep on igniting her forever.

The memory haunts her like nothing else. In the night since, she wakes up suddenly, warm and clammy; her chest heaving, her tussled hair pooling like black sea on the white shrouds of her sheets. Her fingers will gravitate towards her bottom lip, searching on the soft, wet inside for a cut that has already healed.

Preoccupied and hell-bent on it, she pushes herself onto the unsavoury streets, looking for answers. It’s easier to pretend to be a rival of the Doctor’s – after all, so few are so foolish to flaunt it, and these mavericks deserve a conversation before the Doctor inevitably deals with their infection. If their information cannot be traced back to the individual, then they are more than happy to divulge. It is true, there is no honour amongst thieves.

But there are those who know her now, in whatever role she may have been in on first glance: police officer; scouter; the next victim of the one untouchable. These onlookers cannot be convinced. They cannot be sweetened, these dwellers of the shadows. They cannot be cajoled, knowing any threat from outsider dissipates like water thrown on a fire. And Yaz does not try. She knows how they regard her; at the very least, she respects that.

She’s spent more time thinking of those narrow alleys, the Victorian buildings huddled close for warmth, than of the rest of her life. The bright and open of modern Sheffield has become more and more reclusive in her mind’s eye, an unwelcome afterthought.

Family nights are cloying, the same day-to-day rotas of work, college and dinner: Sonya wiggling her eyebrows as soon as she sees her sister’s eyes glaze over with recollection; and her parents asking why she’s so distracted. This is hardly something she can share with anyone, let alone  _ them _ .

Nights with Ryan and Graham, also, provide little with which to occupy her wandering mind – except, of course, their friendships, and the ghost presence that unites them all. It does not help that they have not yet found their targets. Whenever the going is as slow as this, the three of them are gripped by the acute feeling of having failed her.

They will not dare say it, though, for fear of self-fulfilment. There’s something final about words travelling from the brain to the lungs, shaped in thought and then by the machinations of the mouth. From the ephemeral to the tangible, cementing their position on the matter. Breathe it out in more than thought and they will suffer Pandora’s box of guilt: the consequences of shame, of being unworthy of the woman that brought them together.

Closed lips are the final defence. The struggle and the fall; the last thing Yaz wants to be is unworthy. Still, in order to avoid the bubbling of guilt coating her organs, her mind wanders instead to the memories she can’t avoid.

In the quieter moments, when common sense temporarily swipes control back from the haze in which descends, the memories come as a warning. She wonders what on Earth she’s doing, allowing herself to be dragged in like this. The right thing to do is to turn and walk away, reject the seduction laced through all her interactions with the Doctor. It’s not what she’s here for. It’s not her purpose. She will not allow herself to be dragged through Jahannam, ragged and unsatiated and guilty, unless she knows she will come out the other side.

In these quieter moments, the heat is enough to spread through her, to twist her mind to thoughts of sin, but it is not enough to abolish to the guilt. It burns it louder, water on an oil fire.

The quieter moments are the worst moments. Self-immolation, and the blackening of it. So she tries to fill her moments with the loudness of the memory, the closeness of it, the body-to-body embrace.

She grabs common sense by the neck, and plunges it under. Her reward after the killing is the breath of inconsequence – at least, until, common sense revives itself.

In this endless cycle between hope and hate, life as a police officer, humdrum as it is, has turned near-insufferable. It’s not at all her area of expertise, but the whole force of Hallamshire Police officers are called in for the second briefing in as many weeks. The murder epidemic, as the press prefer to screech, shines an uncomfortable truth on the force’s lack of decivisive action. These murders, done in the dead of night in the more unsavoury sides of Sheffield, are the force’s longest-running nuisance, stemming from a time before Yaz joined. Quick deaths, so quick they could be mistaken for a kiss: an injury at the jugular and a drawing of blood. The leading theory invokes the Burke-and-Hare spirit, entrepreneurs of the wicked profiting off the hospitals. It is, however, just a leading theory, half of a fathoming instigated by brilliant minds. But still unsubstantiated. 

Their reputation is deflating, the sad, slow collapse sinking down to Hell. The loss of a police officer at the hands of these elusive killers would not only be a tragedy, but would also be another tragedy for the force’s PR department. The force cannot afford another one. They have been warned.

But Yaz knows all this, has already dissected the information for herself. And this is a good thing, too, as at this briefing, she cannot concentrate. The lead detective on the latest case, DSI Eliza Bandon, sports a new bob haircut. In her severe-cut black suit and slight heel, all eyes stick to her.

Yaz’s, in particular, never leave.

Bandon’s nails are short, but pale pink. Her brow never once loosens as she speaks. Her fingers tap a tune on her right bicep as she ruminates, a never-ending crescendo, the deflation of unwise expectation. Yet Yaz can only look at her, the words of the briefing bouncing off her ears like water off a duck’s back – and instead, in her head, echoes the sound of Louboutin’s striking pavements, again and again and again.

A walk back to her car from the gym, the memory of sweat still filling her nose. She arrived to the gym in the dark; and so she returns to it. Autumn has stymied its freeze these past few nights, but it is merely an abatement of breath; not a kindness. She will be back to slow the joints and dampen the air. For now, Yaz takes gratitude in the settled temperature, electing not to don her coat in the quick rush from the gym doors to the car. She allows her excitement to build at the thought of her heater, the warm air flowing onto aching muscles as she drives.

She scuttles under warm streetlight, the cream of her jumper turning orange in the illumination.

Her hand reaches on the car door – and another hand is on hers. Yaz drags in an interrupted breath, her eyes closed and adrenaline flowing at the recognition of her.

‘Have you been asking around about me?’ comes the voice she’s been listening out for, thick with its own glee. ‘Who’s been spilling my secrets?’

Yaz exhales, trembling. Trembling everywhere. She can feel her presence, like a hot shower, the temperature turned up too high. Still, she attempts to parry.

‘I would’ve thought you liked to retain an air of mystery.’

The Doctor’s hand on her waist – thin clothing; skin anticipating the heater in her car now warmed by the squeeze of fingers on her flesh. Yaz is obliged to turn around, trapped between her car and her instigator. Finally, she opens her eyes. No shower steam breath passes between them, but the Doctor’s hazel eyes are alight with the catch, and Yaz is immobile in it.

The Doctor looks immaculate, pristine and poisonous as ever. Black heat licks at the very corners of her. Dark holy and aware of it – her sharp pleasure. Her smile comes too easy.

‘Oh, I do,’ she answers, ‘but people say what they will.’ She places her other hand on Yaz’s shoulder, and thrusts herself into the lack of space.

From this closeness, Yaz can see a life paused: moles and human inconsistencies; laughter lines and fledgling wrinkles. The deep crease, slightly pulled to the Doctor’s left, in the space between her brows. This is the mortal weathering of a few decades, but certainly not forty years’ worth; and certainly not over forty. Was that man lying to her for his own entertainment? Yet his reluctance was palpable, strong as the stink of beer that punctuated the thick air. The nervousness around the one untouchable, the nervousness of all of them – it speaks volumes.

And now the Doctor wants to know.

She breathes in through her nose, flaring her nostrils, and clicks her tongue. When she speaks, she softens her tone, and her left hand comes up to caress the curve of Yaz’s jaw. ‘Who’s been blabbing to you, Yaz?’

Yaz’s heart sputters a warning. Is this how far she’s gone?

‘They don’t matter,’ she tries. ‘They’re spreading rumours, that’s all. Strange things.’

‘Strange and strange alike,’ the Doctor hums, in lieu of enlightenment. Her right hand travels from Yaz’s shoulder to her collarbone; to the curve of her neck; and starts to dig in. Heat and flesh, burning.

Yaz drops her gym bag, hears the slap on the gravel.

‘Sweetheart, what are their names?’ the Doctor smiles.

Blood is screaming at her; blood, and life endangered. She swallows. ‘I won’t tell you,’ she asserts. She keeps her sight on the thick eyeliner lacquering the Doctor’s face with shadows. Something to ground her while the cream fingertips command an ache.

Black heat, consume her.

She can hear her blood in her ears.

It feels like too much time has passed before the Doctor loosens her grip. The motion leaves behind darker marks, and an echo of an ache. Yaz makes the mistakes of exhaling in relief, regretting the lack of oxygen intake when the Doctor’s hand leaves her neck to journey down her chest. 

‘Ah, well,’ she murmurs, her gaze following the destruction the hand’s path wreaks. ‘The guilty know the guilty.’ She looks back at Yaz, eyes raking over her immobility, and quirks an eyebrow. ‘Don’t we?’

When Yaz opens her mouth to protest her case, the Doctor surges forward once more, pressing a hot mouth to slightly open lips.

The shock of it undoes her, casts aside the ache of her neck to focus only on the immolation jumping back to life. She melts into it; how she’s been waiting for this – ever since the kiss at the pub, ever since Yaz saw the mystery woman for the first time. She is held up only by the Doctor’s roaming hands, the lightning going straight to her legs. She is held up by her need to hold on, to cover herself in the flame, and to burn to gloriousness in it.

She is rewarded by the coincidence of opened mouths, and the first touch of a tongue slipping inside, parting a hot heat. Yaz pushes herself further, her moan a vibration she’s sure the Doctor can feel on the palm of her hand returned to Yaz’s chest.

Rewards can be rescinded just as easily, and with a whimper, Yaz feels the Doctor pull away. Still entwined, but removed, she opens her eyes to see hazel staring back. Surveyed: she is being catalogued. The heaving chest and the desperate fingers. The slight shake of her legs.

The smile on the Doctor’s face is a small one: self-assured, self-impressed. Yaz does not know whether being surveyed means being appreciated yet.

‘Think of me, will you?’ she whispers, throwing in a wink for good measure. She lets go.

It is with this command that she leaves, denying Yaz even the chance to answer. What would she say? She lands on the obvious.

It is impossible not to think of her.

That night, in the half-haze of interrupted sleep and under moonlight, she mistakes shadows outside her window as the woman watching over her.

And she feels dark holy.

‘There are whispers ’round her, y’know.’ The man adjusts the hood obscuring his head, hiding under the heavy brown and the reckless freedom. ‘She don’t have a job but all the money in the world.’

He coughs; it jostles the furred halo.

‘She makes people disappear. Makes ’em fall under her spell and the next thing you know, you never see ’em again.’

‘I don’t need you warning me,’ Yaz retorts.

‘Don’t you?’

She remembers the nights on the job; or on the lookout, waiting for any information from Ryan. She remembers that creeping feeling of never being alone. Not the good kind, never the good kind, but the sort that made echoes louder and open spaces far too expansive. Too much of it: the physicality of space itself stretched out to its limits. She remembers hearing the pain of the stretching of it.

She remembers those first few meetings, the cat-and-mouse game evident but so far removed. The lingering promise of a kiss changes everything, does it not? Perhaps it wouldn’t have, for others; maybe not everyone is wired to surrender that way - but now her wires have been loosened and crossed over, plaited into an incomprehensible tangle. Instead of keeping her common sense planted firmly front and centre, the constraints have been twisted and it falls away, fixed in suspension only by a few vulnerable threads.

At the thought of her, she shivers. But it is no longer fear that sends the anticipation down her spine.

‘Some say she’s not mortal, like – supernatural, mind – mind you, I wouldn’t say this shit lightly–’

‘No, of course not–’

‘I’m not some deadhead, right – I’m not insane – but she’s got some fucking weird vibe, that Doctor – like she’s not – she’s not – she’s not...right. Somehow.’

Yaz detects movement, but the cloak of darkness, deliberately away from the streetlight, is a good concealer.

‘They may not like to admit it – all the locals, I mean: the bartenders think they run the place ’cause they’re the ones pulling the pints – and the drinkers think they run the place ’cause they’re the ones giving a bartenders a job – but, no, it’s her – she decides who lives and who dies here.’

‘Not so different from when she was a real doctor, yeah?’

The woman sniffs. For a moment, as her head ducks out of the shadows and into the light, her face can be seen. Underneath the tight frizz of black hair, her face is all severe angles, a boxy skull and sharp cheekbones high up on her face. Her dark skin glows brown-red in the orange streetlight.

It is only a split second. She realises her mistake and goes back into shadow.

‘I don’t think she’s ever been a proper doctor – she don’t have an ounce of good in her. Have you seen that smile? That’s not a smile you wanna see hanging over your hospital bed – that’s the smile she’d give as she injects you with an overdose.’

Yaz is disturbed that she is no longer disturbed by these conversations. Perhaps this is the consequence of exposure – war-numb and the permanent cope. Perhaps her previous experiences, the police patrols and the vigilantism, have desensitised her enough that she will not flinch at the thought of the haunting woman embodying lethality.

Perhaps she was already embodying it.

But in the quiet moments, when common sense burns brighter than ever before, it unsettles her. Fantasy kisses are one thing; but she cannot deny the Doctor her famed notoriety.

Of everything, she knows one thing: for all of her intention, she and all of the people she has talked to are in a very real danger.

Her hands often travel the same pathways up the flowing expanse of her body. Up, again, and round, where darker marks have settled back into her usual brown.

‘Never seen in daylight, no. Can’t catch me waiting in daylight no more.’ The wizened bartender looks a little alarmed at her own words. She picks up a glass and yanks on the lever – and hastens on. ‘She’s a night-dweller, yes. A creature of it. Answers to its call and all, and delights in it. She likes the crush of bones, she once said to me. A while ago, a while ago now. Likes the taste of life. Guess she was a little boastful back then, back when she kept having a look at me. S’pose I was too.’

‘You’re the only local I’ve talked who’s given your thoughts in confidence,’ Yaz announces. ‘The rest of them have really tried to hide themselves.’

The woman scoffs. ‘I’m not bloody surprised. They’ve all got something to lose!’ The Carlsberg reaches the tip of the glass, an inch of head too shy to peek over the edge of the glass. She lets go of the pulley and places the full drink down on the saturated wood of the bar. The alcohol sloshes like a tempest sea with the impact, a drip spilling over.

It makes Yaz pause. ‘Why not you?’

‘Why not me!’ the bartender laughs, and takes a sip. ‘Sweetie, if she wanted to kill me, she would’ve done it many years ago. She’s not patient, that one. But even the untouchable one don’t want to face the consequences of killing off a good bartender.’

‘So she’s clever.’ Though they both already knew that.

‘Oh, definitely. She’ll run rings around you, pet.’ She sighs, and gulps down more of her lager. She adds, ‘’Course, she could always turn me, but not at my age. Maybe once; not now,’ and she is unable to dampen down the wistfulness in her voice.

Maybe she should be terrified for this woman. Maybe she should be terrified for her own burgeoning empathy; terrified of the thought of this future.

Yaz raises an eyebrow. ‘“Turn?”’

They ring in her ears, the implications. The often-enjoyed and seldom-believed – and believed, apparently, only when it is too late. Of this, Yaz fosters no doubts.

She has brought this fate, this choosing, upon herself. Ripped in two, jagged sore wounds separating the halves, she is torn between falling under completely, and letting the wind hasten her retreat.

But, no – she has to find the middle ground. She has to own this. She knew what she was letting herself in for.

Though, of course, she is still well within her rights to be disgusted when she catches herself tapping her hard-sought ‘characteristic evidence’ into Google. She flings her phone almost across the entire room when self-awareness kicks in. She’s not bloody Bella Swan.

In her tug-of-war tussle between seduction and self-preservation, she forgets she has other, real responsibilities. She retrieves her phone from its banishment to the bed, only to receive an urgent text from Ryan. A quick once-over, and she wraps herself tight within her coat.

Ryan has draped his legs over two dining chairs when she sees him, still poring over CCTV footage he has unfathomably managed to secure.

Yaz has blustered into his and Graham’s house, bringing the chill of night with her. The promptly shut door cannot dispel what has already sneaked through. She has not taken off her coat, nor does she plan to. The buzz of anticipation has mutinied and seized control of most of her motor functions, though this, too, is not news to her, not anymore. Tonight, she is distracted by a different cause, and her un-forthcoming tongue is loosened by the need to accept the steaming mug of tea Graham gifts her. She murmurs a thanks, gets a pat on the back, but her eyes are trained on the laptop screen.

On the laptop lid, the Stenza stone glows softly, cold air spiralling off and away. She still marvels at it, and the transformation it has done to Ryan’s laptop. Information transfer, access to databases. They can’t protect Sheffield without it. They can only fail her.

‘So it’s definitely him?’ Yaz asks.

Ryan and Graham nod. ‘All them sources confirm it. He’s back, after a century, apparently,’ Graham answers. He gives a single laugh. ‘A bleedin’ century!’

‘We were lucky to catch him when we did,’ Ryan notes.

Yaz hums in agreement, and focuses again on the screen. The CCTV video is pixelated, black and white, but the figure is unmistakably their target. From what they can make out on the low-resolution video, he is not so much a sceptre of death than Death’s personal assistant: his nice suit and long coat do well to give off a humanoid appearance. But the uneven bumps on the jaw belie a more sinister truth. And – he turns his face, unwittingly, to face the camera – he sports two protruding canines, half the size of a sabertooth’s. Prowling around a graveyard, he does not betray a bigger motivation, any sort of purpose.

But after a hundred years, he is back in Sheffield, and that is all they need.

Yaz takes a sip of her tea, and regrets it. Through an added lip instigated by her slightly burnt tongue, she asks, ‘So what’s the plan?’

‘Same as always,’ Graham responds. ‘Monitor him, figure out why he’s here, and then confront him.’

Ryan rubs a palm over tired eyes. ‘We can figure out some sorta deal when he knows we’re here to kick him off the planet.’ Looking up expectantly at her, he adds, ‘You still...looking out in the meantime?’

Yaz’s throat goes dry. She clears it, unsuccessfully at first. ‘Uh, of course,’ she says, and it’s not a lie, not exactly. Neither is it the truth the two men are expecting.

Shame burns her again, but black heat will not stay dormant for long. It presses itself up against the echoes planted all over her body, licking at the ghost-marks on the side of her neck. Her fingers caress the connection there out of habit.

And Ryan’s frown follows the movement.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yasmin khan vs stephenie meyer. FIGHT

**Author's Note:**

> dark!jodie in any character is h*t i don't make the rules


End file.
